Trying To Understand The Carney Government’s Actions

Online, I am seeing a ton of reactions to what the current Liberal government in Ottawa is doing.  These range from outrage over a perceived non-reaction to Trump’s latest temper tantrum, to anger over cuts to various parts of the civil service.  

I get it - a lot of people are thinking “this isn’t what I voted for!”, and to some extent they are right to criticize the government’s actions.  There’s a very visceral desire to punch back every time Trump does something so utterly bone-headed, and while doing that hearing Carney talk about tax cuts and cuts to the government seems like we elected Poilievre with a better personality.

I’m not going to spend a lot of time here talking about specific details, or directives given to ministers.  What I want to do is tease apart the big picture of what we are facing and highlight how this all fits together.  

Make no mistake about it, Canada is very much in the Trump administration’s crosshairs.  What exactly their intentions are is hard to say, but it’s clear that the US government has started a trade war with Canada, and in doing so has made it very clear that our current relationship with the US is no longer a thing going forward. 

Second, on the world stage, Trump has pulled back from its traditional allies and role.  This includes all but walking away from NATO, the G7, and the UN.  This makes the world as a whole a lot more unstable, and dangerous for traditional “middle power” nations like Canada. 

Canada’s place in the world is now much more precarious than it was before January 20, 2025.  The country we traditionally relied upon both as a key customer for our economic activity and as a key partner in defence has turned against us, potentially with territorial ambitions. 

In normal circumstances, the negotiations currently going on with the US over trade and defence relationships take place behind the scenes with diplomats and policy specialists doing the heavy lifting.  Normally, national leaders don’t say anything much until those efforts are mostly concluded and an agreement is imminent.  This time, Trump is routinely making extreme, if not outrageous, statements that likely undermine those negotiations entirely, or make the job of the diplomats exponentially more difficult. 

Like it or not, Carney has taken a “I’m not going to react to Trump’s bellicosity in public” approach.  In some respects, this is appropriate.  Trump is a bully.  If you react to his provocations by coming out swinging, you’re playing his game.  He’s stated many times, “you hit me, I’ll hit you back twice as hard”.  So, yeah, while punching back would feel momentarily satisfying, the escalation it would produce would not be helpful. 

Meanwhile, Carney has stated that he is planning to re-orient Canada’s economy in a big way.  Not only is he committing to a much bigger military than we have traditionally managed, he is wanting to change procurement so that our military purchases aren’t automatically from the US.  That’s no small matter at all - putting our military on track for a spend at 2.5% of GDP, escalating to 5% of GDP over the next decade is an enormous change all by itself.  (We’ll come back to this) 

Then there is what Carney is clearly doing behind the scenes with other trading partners and allies, in particular the EU.  He’s in the process of starting to diversify our trading relationships with the longer term aim of reducing the enmeshment with the US we currently have.  This is a huge project in its own right - we can’t just “slam the doors shut” on the US border (nor can they, realistically).  Canada’s economy is big enough to make us part of the G7 - you cannot change the direction of something that size “on a dime”.  Doing so is a complex and difficult process.  I applaud Carney’s approach here where he is reworking trade relationships with Europe first (which is collectively a huge economy as well), while continuing to negotiate “in good faith” with the US.  

On top of that, Carney has to do this in the context of a minority parliament, which is almost guaranteed to be fractious once Poilievre returns to the house in a few weeks’ time.  He also has to (one way or another) get enough buy-in from the various provincial premiers to be able to move major policy goals forward such as dismantling inter-provincial trade barriers that make it easier to sell to the US than to our neighbouring provinces (and yes, that includes somehow finding ways to keep Danielle Smith from going completely rogue).

I don’t know how many people realize that doing this relatively quietly so as to not immediately anger Trump’s administration is a very careful balancing act.  This is “diplomatically threading the needle” stuff.  It’s hard to do, and even harder to communicate to the average person on the street who is sick of hearing Trump go off every few days on some incoherent rage-filled tirade.    

Trump’s rambling about tariffs and threats to annex Canada united a lot of people behind Carney who made it clear that he wasn’t going to be Trump’s patsy, while the conservatives under Poilievre continued a campaign that basically said “look at me, I’m mini-Trump”.  As much as I loathe nationalism, it made Canadians stand up and take notice of what was going on.  

We have to put Canada onto a “war footing”, and that’s going to be a monumental task because this isn’t just a bunch of military posturing, like the Cold War, its real impacts and tactics take place in the realms of the economic and diplomatic.  I don’t think a lot of people have thought about it in those terms - it will mean decisions that people won’t like for one reason or another, and it will mean that our “comfortable lives” may well get turned upside down.  

This isn’t to say that you shouldn’t criticize Carney and what he’s doing.  But it would be worth your time to think about how all of these things fit together and how a given action fits into the picture before going off. 

A Little Example

GLBT folk are often targets for discrimination and persecution - especially in this era of increased travel security.

It is a sad statement that TSA staff are creating their own little games based on other people's lives and appearances.

The board, resembling the TV game show "Jeopardy," includes categories such as "pickle smokers," "our gang" and "creatures," which sources said were names used by managers for gay men, African-Americans and lesbians.

This is nothing more than an invitation to TSA staff to engage in increased harassment of GLBT and coloured people - for no better reason than the amusement of TSA staff.

As an example of systemic discrimination and bigotry, this is an exceptionally blatant form, and it is an example of what is wrong with the paranoid mentality that has evolved since 9/11. I see this as a symptom of the resurrection of the same kinds of irrationality that gave us McArthy's 'better dead than red' anti-communist propaganda. Anyone who is 'different' is immediately a target.

Harper On The Concept of Head of State

Apparently, Harper doesn't understand ... or doesn't want to admit ... that our head of state isn't him.

The charismatic Ms. Jean and the command-and-control Prime Minister, Stephen Harper, have been locked in tense matters of interpretation of her duty before. Last December, the PM asked her to shut Parliament and head off a coalition's attempts to topple him.

Now, they've had a public dispute over whether the Governor-General is Canada's head of state – or something like it. Mr. Harper has in a sense styled himself as defender of the Queen's title, against what some monarchists call a creeping campaign to elevate the viceroy at the expense of the sovereign.

In a speech Monday, Ms. Jean referred to herself as Canada's “head of state,” prompting complaints from monarchists that the Queen's representative was usurping the monarch's title. Mr. Harper, through spokesman Dimitri Soudas, said the Queen is Canada's head of state, and the Governor-General her representative in Canada.

It may seem to be more about splitting hairs than anything else, but this is one more example of Harper attempting to get his way by bullying people when he can't get his way.

I'm pretty sure that what went on last fall when Harper prorogued parliament to avoid a confidence vote he was all but guaranteed to lose had more to do with Harper threatening the GG's role or validity in some way, and this little spat gives us a little more insight into the discussion.

What Harper doesn't recognize is that while the Queen is our titular head of state, her powers are fundamentally delegated to the Governor General - making the GG our effective head of state. In theory, a dispute involving the GG could be appealed to the Queen although I wonder if the Queen would simply send back a "sort it out yourselves" response - especially since Canada repatriated its constitution in 1980.

Canada's Constitution doesn't define a “head of state,” but invests executive power in the Queen; in 1947, King George VI delegated most of the monarch's duties in Canada to the governor-general in letters patent. Most legal experts believe that makes the Queen is head of state, but some constitutional experts like the University of Toronto's Peter Russell believe the evolution of the governor-general's role means its not improper for a Governor-General to use the phrase, too.

Coming from a man who doesn't delegate much of anything to his cabinet ministers, it's no surprise that Harper does not understand the delegation of powers from the Queen to the Governor General. It's a sad statement about just how sadly stunted Harper must be that he seems to seek out conflict.

More Dog Whistles Out of Edmonton

So, Premier Stelmach finally said something about his direction yesterday.

A defiant Alberta premier broke ranks with some of his own senior cabinet ministers Tuesday, declaring that, under his watch, taxes will never increase to help the government escape from its multibillion-dollar deficit and a deepening fiscal hole.

One day after some of his most trusted ministers said both tax hikes and program cuts are needed to redress the province's revenue crunch, Premier Ed Stelmach said his government won't hike personal or corporate taxes, and vowed never to adopt a provincial sales tax.

This is another dog whistle moment - to the extreme right wing base that now seems to have control over the Alberta PC's. It's a signal that under Stelmach, the government is going to get axed down to as small as he can make it.

It shows a disappointing lack of vision and wisdom on his part though. He has just shackled himself to only surviving on existing revenues - by far the majority of which are coming in from a natural resources sector that has been pummeled in recent months.

Stelmach has just taken so many tools off the table, that his government's ability to respond to the economic situation we see today is reduced to two things: borrowing money and cutting services. That's it.

It's a sacred cow in Alberta that we will never have a provincial sales tax. When times have been good, that's been feasible for the government to get away with, and it plays well at the ballot box. What Stelmach, and others, fail to recognize is that a Sales Tax would go a long ways to stabilizing the revenues that the Alberta Government sees.

Unfortunately, Stelmach is playing to his base - he has been more blatantly since the April budget, and it's going to get a whole lot worse in the coming months. Especially when the leadership of the governing party isn't even willing to consider all of the tools that are available to him in addressing the current situation.

Stelmach's approach is going to make the recession in Alberta lot worse, and a lot deeper for longer in short order - purely so he can shore up his support within the party.

Talk about a government being past its "best before" date!

Harper, Military Salutes and other Corruption

As if I needed another reason to think of Stephen Harper as a complete ass.

Dave over at TGB points out the arrogance and disrespect that our Prime Minister has shown for Canada, Canadians, and our system of government on Canada Day.

The Bad News First ...

Canadians returned the Stephen Harper Party to the PMO. Bad move. Very bad move, IMO.

The good news is that Quebec didn't give Harper any gains - which is the one thing that appears to have kept him out of the majority he has sought.

I expect we will see a parliament every bit as dysfunctional and rancorous as the previous parliament. The simple fact is that the HarperCon$ have no natural allies in the house, and they have gone to great lengths to isolate themselves politically. There is no sense in my mind that Harper will play for compromise - he will continue to bully his way along and in doing so will be quite destructive.

Personally, I think Dion is toast. I like the man, and I think he's more than smart enough to do the job. But, it isn't a matter of him being likable right now - it's a matter of him being able to stand toe to toe with Harper and hand Harper and his band of sneering thugs their asses back to them. (Which isn't hard to do, but requires a style that Dion simply lacks)

The Dominionist Influence In The HarperCon$

This is unquestionably bad mojo for the HarperCon$ who keep trying to convince us that they are not a bunch of dominionist wingnuts.

Unfortunately, when your MPs put out bookmarks that say things like:

That we may lead according to the Scriptural Foundation upon which our country was founded

...it tells us quite a bit that most Canadians should be worried about - especially with MPs like Ken Epp and Maurice Vellacott coming up with "private member's bills" that are unquestionably playing to the religious extreme base in the party. (I will point out that a surprisingly high percentage of the government benches voted for Epp's bill C-484 - in spite of its obvious flaws.

Making Us More Secure...

In the wake of 9/11, governments in both Canada and the United States have gone to great lengths to make our respective countries "more secure". For the most part, these have been window dressing activities, intended to buffalo the public into believing that the politicians are doing something.

One of Canada's more amusing moves was to create a "border snitch line" where people could call in and identify possible threats.

As we might expect, most of what gets called into this line is vindictive or tin foil hat crazy. How surprising. After all, most people wouldn't recognize a terrorist threat if it bit them, and come to that, most terrorists are going to be pretty closed-mouthed about their intentions until it's too late. (Ya figure?)

Besides, isn't that what the police have telephone numbers for in the first place?

On Restructuring Government and Term Limits

I get e-mail - and from time to time, a writer takes the time to approach a topic in some detail. What follows is the body of an e-mail I received at the end of last week. I will add my commentary on some of the topics after the writer's e-mail. (Please note, I have edited out references to names and personal context in the e-mail for privacy reasons)

Because I am not sure exactly whether you mean to limit the terms of the legislator or the government I have approached the matter from two aspects. The first is possible if highly unusual, the second should never be possible in a parliamentary system.

a) Lets look at the first, at the possible, if highly unusual situation;

By this method legislation would be needed to limit the length of time a person would be allowed to sit in the legislature. After that time that person would have to step down in favour of another person. From what I know of the make-up of a legislature anywhere, this would be a highly unusual step. Even in the US there seems to be no limit to how long a person may be in office in Congress. The US presidency is a different situation as he is limited to two 4-year terms. A possibility, but not too likely, is for the political party to have this form of limit in its constitution. The best bet would be that the prospective MLA/MP would state in his/her election campaign that they will step down after a fixed period. I have only known of two people to do this in Canada – Frank McKenna, former premier of Nova Scotia and R. Gary Dickson former Liberal MLA for Calgary Buffalo.

b) The second scenario affects the government per se.

I frankly do not believe that this is possible nor should it ever be contemplated under the Westminster style of government that we follow in Canada. Presently governments are elected for a maximum term of five years (certain provinces and the federal government have set fixed election dates – every 4 years) after which an election is called. The obvious problem is that the same bad apples (Alberta?) can be re-elected. That is the risk that the electors face. To state that a governing party must turn the reins of government over to another party goes against the main underpinning of a parliamentary democracy, namely that it is the people who elect the government. In short, a government is elected by the people for the people, at least that is how it is supposed to be. Unfortunately once they get into power they forget that basic principle. Sir Winston S Churchill always stated the he and the other MP's in the UK were elected by “the will of the people”.

So all this begs the question “How do we change the government”. The simple answer is by having a strong opposition party which can make its presence felt both in the legislature and in the media. This requires an electorate which is prepared to be knowledgeable about the platforms of the various parties and to use that knowledge on voting day. Thus a parliamentary democracy always reflects “the will of the people”. Another problem with restricting the term of office is that the province or country could be denied the necessary services of the likes of Peter Lougheed, Pierre Elliot Trudeau and Sir John A. Mac Donald to name but a few. The only way I can think of to rid ourselves of the likes of Rob Anders, Graig Chandler (although he was not elected) is to have strong candidates on the other side coupled with enough voters who will vote for the person not the party.

Many years ago the question was raised as to why do we need a strong opposition. I cannot remember who raised the topic but I came across it when reading “Alberta Premiers of the Twentieth Century”. This book discusses each of the premiers of Alberta from Alexander Cameron Rutherford in 1905 to Ralph Klein. If I remember rightly it came up during the term of office of the UFA in the 1920's or early 1930's. Unfortunately I haven't, since, been able to find the comment. I must re-read that part again sometime. I don't think the question was ever answered but the raising of it points to a flaw in the way Albertans think on matters political.

This fairs quite nicely with some other conversations I've been having with a few other people.

(1) On term limits, the Westminster system of government is designed in such a way that it pretty much precludes term limits in any practical sense - unless we would apply them to all members of the house. The problem with doing that is one of continuity. One of the key premises of either the Westminster or the US Republican style of government is that the legislative houses provide a significant degree of continuity between political leadership and the bureaucracy. This is achieved by permitting individual legislators to sit for protracted periods of time - in effect becoming a part of the system with ties to both the electorate and the bureaucracy.

While I would like to see limits placed on how long someone can hold cabinet posts (including the Premier/Prime Minister), I suspect that doing so may be impractical without harsh changes to the party constitutions.

(2) Democracy depends on the active participation of the public in order to work effectively. The reason for this is simple - even in Alberta, there is quite a wide diversity of political opinion. Unfortunately, several decades of single-party rule have accustomed Alberta voters to a "it doesn't matter" apathy (as the last election demonstrated so well)

What breeds voter apathy? Several things - a lack of knowledge and awareness is key. Far too many people simply have no clue how government policy affects their daily lives. The majority of people I know that do not bother to vote claim that they don't believe that government above the local council (and in Calgary, even that's pretty abstract for most of us) has any direct impact on them.

Apathy is also the spawn of complacency. Alberta is an interesting case study. We have had close to 20 years of comparatively good economic fortunes - quite frankly a shaved chimpanzee could have balanced Alberta's books in the last decade or so. When times are perceived to be "good", people are reluctant to shake things up by changing the government. (A classic case of 'The Goose Who Laid the Golden Egg")

I have come to view education as a vital and key part of making a viable, living democracy. If people are given the intellectual tools with which they can understand the basics of our system of government, they can then influence it more effectively as voters.

Alberta is a unique case for several reasons. First, in the last thirty years, we have had not one, but two very strong personalities occupy the Premier's Office - Peter Lougheed and (choke) Ralph Klein.

The second part of the picture is that conservatives in the province have been very effective in demonizing the very term "liberal" since Pierre Trudeau's ill-fated NEP. This has proven to be an amazingly powerful tool for them to use in reinforcing their grip on power in Alberta.

The third part has been a subtle, but significant campaign on the part of Alberta followers of the neo-conservative movement out of the US to dismantle and handicap the public education system. This started back when Don Getty was the premier. For those who do not remember, it was under Getty that the first rounds of the cutbacks that Ralph took to new heights happened. One of the key areas cut was public education - at all levels. This strongly mirrors attempts by Ronald Reagan to dismantle the US Department of Education during his tenure in the White House.

Besides the usual conservative mantra about "less government", there is a deliberate intent to weakening the public education system. In general, a weak education tends to favour the simplistic talking points and sound bytes that the neoCons like to toss around. If you look back at the 2006 Federal Election, it's pretty clear that Harper said nothing meaningful through the entire campaign.

Without an adequate education that engages people in the political process in their youth, government becomes an abstract, and untouchable notion - something that is easily demonized and that plays into the goals of the neoCons.

The last point I'd like to raise is that of electoral reform. To be polite, I'd claim that Alberta (in particular) has experienced a degree of manipulation of electoral boundaries that has all but undermined the basic principles of Representation by Population that is the theoretical underpinning of our riding system. I believe (and have believed for some time) that the representation system in Alberta is a disaster today. Radical reform is needed to dispel the sense that there is a significant disparity between rural and urban vote "weight" in the government.

Without an educational infrastructure that enables people to understand how government affects them, and how their participation is meaningful, no reform - whether we talk about term limits, riding reform or voter recall will achieve any significant results.

As my writer earlier points out, the Westminster system works best when there is a strong opposition. A strong opposition is not going happen easily in the current environment in Alberta.

On The Role of Government

An oft-heard complaint about politicians is "but they've never run a business", or something to that effect. Largely, the complaint is based on the notion that Government is very similar to business.

In so far as any government is bound by the economic realities in which it exists, this is at least partially true. In general, we don't really want our governments to spend the public into debt unnecessarily. (That isn't to say that debt is inherently a bad thing, but rather that incurring long term debt should be connected to some long term asset or objectives - tangibles such as roads or hospitals come to mind as examples where debt is not necessarily an evil thing)

However, business is all about one thing: making money. No business I can think of does not place making a profit at the top of its list of objectives. However, we must also remember that money is fundamentally amoral - it is bound by no particular morality or ethic. From a "purely business" perspective, there is little difference between a pharmaceutical company and an organized crime gang like the Hell's Angels. At the end of the day, both conduct a form of commerce with the objective of making continued profits.

However, government does not exist purely for the purpose of making money - in fact, I think one could argue that we grant the government extraordinary powers with respect to money because government is about a great deal more than just making money.

Government also has significant responsibilities that cannot be reflected on the fiscal balance sheet. Certainly in western countries, we look to government to provide a framework to protect a variety of "public interests". Topics such as public safety come to mind (I should be able to walk down the street without fear of being mugged or assaulted); national defense; and citizen's rights in general.

It is difficult to measure some of those subjects indeed. In Canada, we have made a decision that topics such as education and health care are at least partially held to be part of the government's purview. Education, or health care are extremely expensive, and when looked at in a purely financial sense sound like bad expenses. The ethos in Alberta, for example, has been largely to starve both financially - to insist that they operate on minimalist budgets, and refuse to fund even basic repairs to infrastructure such as school roofs.

The outcomes of public education systems are measured not by the next quarter, but often decades later. Arguably, the early 1990s harvested the fruits of investments in education made in the late '70s and '80s. Meanwhile, today, we are just beginning to witness the effects of dramatic cuts that started to be made in the late 1980s.

But, it's not just about money. That's really what I'm getting at. The society we live in is shaped dramatically by the structures that governments create (or fail to create). We rise and fall on the ability of our governments to look beyond the short term concerns about money. Overemphasis on one area starves another, with inevitable consequences.

As subjects such as poverty should bring to mind, government's success or failure is measured not merely upon the fiscal balance sheet, but people also must respond to the "social balance sheet". Alberta has been going through an economic boom in recent years, and a parsimonious attitude on the part of the provincial government towards the social balance sheet has created a situation where a lot of people are faced with serious challenges just finding shelter and putting food on the table. Sure there are jobs - lots of them, but inflation has driven to cost of food and shelter up significantly for those who do not own their homes (and the threshold for ownership has moved up - way up).

The consequences of that short-sightedness on the part of Ralph Klein's government is being reflected now in plummeting polling numbers for Ed Stelmach, and a certain degree of "jaded cynicism" being expressed towards a recent round of spending announcements. There are other concerns that are attracting public attention as well - people are becoming skeptical that the Oil Sands developments are being appropriately managed, or that adequate resources are being put into place to ensure that the mining operations can be cleaned up.

Whether politicians wish to admit it, they are measured not merely upon the government's finances, but also upon the kind of society that their government (or predecessors' governments) have forged as a result of their actions.

Light on Relations ... Period

I see that the Stelmach Cons are as clueless about relations with other governments as the Harper Cons.

It seems to me that just as Harper can't seem to "get it" on either the world or domestic stages, neither can Stelmach's bunch get it right in managing the relationship between the government in Edmonton and the cities in Alberta.

In neither case does this come as a big surprise. Every piece of evidence I have seen to date makes it clear that the only kind of negotiations that Harper is capable of takes its roots in the "six-shooter diplomacy" of George W. Bush. Whether it is on the world stage, where Harper's performances have had all the nuance of an incontinent water buffalo in five star restaurant, or at home, where Harper not only turns everything into a confrontation, but a pugilistic one at that. Turning to the provinces and saying "so sue me" is buying yourself exactly no love.

At home, Stelmach is a lifelong farmer - he has no idea about the stresses and problems that are faced by Alberta's large urban centers. Now he thinks he is going to assuage that by pouring money into the cities. Don't get me wrong, the money is badly needed, but that isn't what the problem is. Having your cabinet ministers running about making snotty remarks about the cities like Ted Morton just did only gets people's noses out of joint.

No, Albertans - at least in Calgary Elbow - have made a statement. It's time for the government to show us some vision and actual leadership. This means showing us a plan that looks beyond the end of your stubby noses, without turning it into a juvenile pissing match.